Religious freedom includes choosing teachers of faith

The Australian Law Reform Commission scores a clear fail for its intrusion into the ability of faith-based schools to choose the teachers they want. The commission has indulged in a clear case of mission creep on the task it was set by government to balance the laws of anti-discrimination and religious freedom. Rather than finding a way for faith-based schools to continue to employ teachers who share their religious views, the ALRC’s proposal would narrow this freedom to cover only a select few. Restricting the religious freedom of schools on staff selection to purely those who teach religion oversteps the terms of reference the ALRC was given. It ignores the wishes of many parents who choose a religious school because they expect it will provide an immersive experience in the values they share. Instead, the ALRC has chosen to foster the overweening secular push that seeks to weaken strongly held traditions and encourages state intrusion into areas that should be strictly out of bounds.

In doing so, the ALRC has delivered another headache for the Albanese government and demonstrated there are no easy wins when it comes to religious freedoms, an area that defeated the Morrison government despite it being a Coalition election promise. The Morrison government’s attempt to legislate fell short in a bid to protect the rights of gay students when the focus then became the treatment of transgender children.

Labor’s attempt at reform has produced a cross-faith coalition of opposition. An alliance of the nation’s most senior spiritual leaders from Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths has warned the future of religious education is under threat. All are outraged at the way in which the ALRC has approached its task. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus asked the ALRC in November to recommend changes to the way federal anti-discrimination law applies to religious schools and other educational institutions.

The purpose of reforms was to outlaw discrimination against students and teachers on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or relationship status, or pregnancy. The terms of reference included the desire for schools to “continue to build a community of faith by giving preference, in good faith, to persons of the same religion as the educational institution in the selection of staff”. The response from the ALRC was for “religious schools to maintain their religious character by permitting them to give preference to prospective staff on religious grounds where the teaching, observance or practice of religion is a part of their role and require all staff to respect the educational institution’s religious ethos”. In short, schools could be forced to hire teachers who do not share their faith and fire them only if they actively undermined their employers’ beliefs.

Religious leaders say the interpretation would be a legal nightmare given the unreasonable test of determining what would constitute “teaching, observance or practice of religion being, genuinely, a part of the role”. Anthony Albanese has quickly sensed the danger of letting the religious freedom issue get out of hand, as it did for Scott Morrison. Many Labor supporters have strongly held views about the issue. The Prime Minister said on Tuesday that the government position was for faith-based schools to be able to choose the teachers they wanted. Opposition legal affairs spokesman Julian Leeser has heaped the blame on to Labor and says the issue is about parental rights and the government should go back to basics.

The ALRC is due to report to government in April. It must try harder and reconsider the overreach it has applied to the terms of reference given to it by government and instead work on a solution that allows schools to build the sort of teaching community they believe best represents the world view parents expect them to deliver.